Retail facilities (e.g., large department stores) often display products in more than one location on the sales floor. For example, a product may be displayed to customers on a shelf at its primary stocking location on the sales floor, but also simultaneously at a secondary stocking location such as a feature display designed to attract customers' attention to the product. When a product is sold at the point of sale device (e.g., sale register) on the sales floor, the scanning of the product at the point of sale device does not indicate whether the product purchased by the customer was taken by the customer from the primary stocking location of the product or from the secondary stocking location of the product. A corollary problem that occurs is that workers at the retail facility tasked with bringing a product to replenish the stocking location on the sales floor generally do not know that this product is displayed on the sales floor at a primary stocking location and at a secondary stocking location, or whether the product is being brought to replenish the primary stocking location or to replenish the secondary display location.
When workers at a retail facility, who do not know whether a product is being brought to the sales floor to replenish the stock at the primary stocking location or the secondary stocking location, arrive at the primary stocking location of the product on the sales floor with one or more replenishment products only to see that the primary stocking location does not have available space for the replenishment products, the workers are forced to bring the replenishment product to the secondary stocking location after having made an unnecessary trip with the replenishment product to the primary stocking location, which is inefficient. If, on the other hand, workers at the retail facility, who do not know that the replenishment product being brought onto the sales floor is also being displayed to customers at a second stocking location, arrive at the primary stocking location of the product on the sales floor with one or more replenishment products only to see that the primary stocking location does not have available space for the replenishment products, the workers often assume that the replenishment request for the product was erroneous and return the replenishment products to the stock room to be re-binned. As a result, the replenishment products brought out onto the sales floor to replace the products that were sold to consumers from the secondary stocking location do not end up being stocked at the second stocking location to replenish the stock depleted due to sales. Instead, the replenishment products end up being returned by the workers back to the stock room of the retail facility, while empty spaces allotted for these products continue to exist on the sale floor, undesirably leading to possible lost sales and loss of revenue for the retail sales facility.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.